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 Indeed, one could well say that these stories are like haunted rooms whose doors have been left open: the reader is free to enter – and must do so, if each room's secrets are to be fully plumbed. Allen’s art lies in her descriptions; in the freedom she allows the reader to supply the ‘therefore’ and the ‘because’.
Reviewed by P.P.O. Kane
A Thread of Truth
By Nina Allan
Eibonvale Press, January 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0955526800
Blood and Gore would make quite good names for a couple of Teddy Bears; their presence in horror fiction is now rather familiar and strangely comforting. They are not to be found here. Instead, this impressive collection of stories, each one disturbing and drenched with dread, is subtly disquieting.
The title story is about arachnophobia as a station on the journey towards love. The fear of spiders becomes a fear of dirty buildings (where spiders may lurk) and a fear of the world (where they have pretty much got the ‘survival of the fittest’ thing sussed). Ultimately, the story relates the process whereby these fears – and add here the fear of intimacy too - are overcome, or at any rate transmuted, by love..
Other stories touch on a sense of being homeless in the world (‘Bird Songs at Eventide’), an essential aloneness from others (‘Terminus’) and perhaps childhood abuse of some kind (‘Amethyst’). Though one should stress that these themes are on the whole implicit, hidden, understated. Or imagined by the (i.e. this) reader.
Indeed, one could well say that these stories are like haunted rooms whose doors have been left open: the reader is free to enter – and must do so, if each room's secrets are to be fully plumbed. Allen’s art lies in her descriptions; in the freedom she allows the reader to supply the ‘therefore’ and the ‘because’. And her art is apparent too in the consummate way in which she lets complexity and ambiguity accumulate, which makes for a tremulous enchantment.
This is an unsettling and strange collection of stories, of real literary quality. On continued rereadings, none of them quite disclose their full mystery.
About the reviewer: P.P.O. Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and you can reach him at ludic@europe.com
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